World-premiere “Drummhicit” has lots of ideas, not much focus

The title of La Jolla Playhouse’s latest show, “A Dram of Drummhicit,” is tricky to pronounce. The point of the play? Also a little hard to say.

The world-premiere comedy by Arthur Kopit and Anton Dudley doesn’t lack for imagination; in fact, just the opposite is true. Set in modern-day Scotland, the piece crisscrosses ancient legends, pagan beliefs, New Age kinkiness and detective-novel thinkiness into some kind of very mad plaid.

Along the way, this crazy-kilt of a play invokes cultural touchstones from “Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps” (or at least the wiseacre Broadway revamp seen at the Playhouse in 2009) to “The Lord of the Rings” (complete with irritable spirit beings and a secret language), even tossing in a plot trope from “Star Wars.”

It’s all acted with a gleeful brio and directed by Playhouse artistic chief Christopher Ashley with as much momentum and cohesion as the sprawling, oddball story will allow.

But the play’s mongrel mix of farce, mystery and mysticism lends the show a wavering tone that can cut into its comic impact, and some of the sheer weirdness ends up more head-scratching than rib-tickling.

That’s especially true of the “bog people” — preserved bodies that, as a matter of archaelogical fact, pop up in Scotland’s peat bogs from time to time. They pop up in “Drummhicit,” too, both as spooky omens and as comic props, and they tend to clutter the story in the same way they apparently litter the play’s landscape.

One incarnation even echoes Kopit’s own early play “Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mama’s Hung You in the Closet and I’m Feelin’ So Sad,” about a woman who totes along her deceased husband on her travels. (Kopit, a two-time Tony nominee, is probably best-known for writing the book to the musical “Nine”; the new play is his first collaboration with Dudley, a former student of Kopit’s.)

The story takes off from the true-life tale of developers in Scotland who were forced to abandon a housing project because residents said it would disturb a fairy settlement. In “Drummhicit” (named for a fictional local Scotch, and pronounced “Drum-HICCCK-it”), Charles Pearse (Lucas Hall) has alighted on the sleepy isle of Muckle Skerry as a fixer for American developer Robert Bruce (a comically crass Murphy Guyer).

Bruce plans to build a couple of golf courses on the island, but as Pearse discovers, the bog bodies and the ever-elusive fairies may not want the Americans to play through.

As the central character, Hall treads the play’s tonal line deftly, keeping a balance between a straight face and a knowing wink. (He also showed grace under pressure on opening night, when the performance was stopped in midscene so an errant stage drop could be fixed.)

He’s helped by appealing turns from (among others) Kelly AuCoin as the local barkeep and unofficial citizen spokesman, Mackenzie; Polly Lee as Fiona, the local lass who catches Pearse’s eye and may hold the key to the fairy enigma; Alan Mandell as an excitable local elder; Kathryn Meisle as a snooping museum rep; and Larry Paulsen as a pastor at wit’s end.

David Zinn’s earthy, evocatively textured sets include a nice visual joke: a church that rotates to become a pub. Philip Rosenberg’s suitably moody lighting, David C. Woolard’s witty costuming and John Gromada’s sound design (which hints of Druid ritual) add to the atmosphere.

As the still-raw product of inventive theater minds, “Drummhicit” is a stiff shot of inspiration. But as polished comedy, it's still struggling to take wing with its fairy feet caught in a bog.